Kings Road

I’ve been sucked in by a new online IPad game – Kings Road. I blame MG, she sent me the game invite. A linear RPG, you chose from three character classes – Archer, Mage, Knight, and you fight your way down the Kings Road through a series of scenarios. The designers have pretty much thought of everything – fun graphics, character and monster design. Upgradeable weapons, armor and extras (such as rings, amulets, et cetera). Each class has distinct active and passive skills or spells you can allocate skill points to. You can play the scenarios through by yourself or with up to two friends. They have tournaments and guilds, and you can train an apprentice. It really is a well thought out, fun game.

So what’s the catch? Ultimately the designers are in it to make money (of course), and you never seem to have enough gold or gems to do everything you want to do, when you want to do it (did I mention you can socket jewels on your equipment to make them more powerful? Or that you can forge items out of lesser items to increase your overall power? Or that you can switch classes or reallocate spell and skill points? Well, you can – if you have enough gold). The game stands ready to entice you into gem purchase with daily specials and deals, and at $10 for a thousand gems, I imagine you could easily develop an expensive habit very quickly. But it’s important to note this game is very playable without buying extra gems. The ability to play with friends on its own makes this a fun game to have. Worth checking out, and important tip – when the onetime offer eventually comes to buy 1,000 extra gems at 99 cents, jump on it. It doesn’t came around twice.

I’m quite familiar with how App games are set up to be a money drain…
My game of choice for the last 2 1/2 years or so is Clash of Clans.
It is not RP based like Kings Road, instead you build a villiage and defend it against other players, slowly building new troops and defense buildings over time.. unless you want to buy gems with real money of course.
It has two levels of combat: you can raid other individual bases for resources, or you can go to war with your clanmates and try and destroy a randomly matched enemy clan… also for resources, but with large bonuses to the victorious clan.
It is an excellent time waster, and it does have a nice feature in that trees and shrubs, and the occasional Gem box will randomly pop up on your territory; clearing them often provides gems; so with patience ou can save up gems over time…
I of course tend to be impatient and use gift card I have speciffically asked for at christmas and birthdays to boost my gem supply.. so I can build my villiage faster.

I’ve tested enough of these types of games to know all the patterns, so they just don’t do it for me anymore. Though I confess that back in the day when they first started I played a couple.

Forlath, regarding King’s Road (MG sent me an invite as well):
Your character is male by default, but I found the function in the menu where you can switch to being female, which immediately replaced my character’s full body armour with bikini armour. NOPE. That’s where I stopped playing.

Dunno, I’ve just got this mental image of tripping up the cowboy on stage with the sword, and then he’d stumble into the fireman and then he’d bump into the policeman and then everyone would be mad at me. I don’t think it would work out . . . it’s fun to stay at the D – W – never mind . . .

By the way, stopped playing Kings Road at about level 41, the the constant ‘deal of the day’ pop ups and instability of the tablet app finally put me off. It was also becoming a bit repetitive, the graphics were still fun, but running the same levels over and over to earn experience and the occasional semi-decent weapon or armor drop was losing its luster.

Gold making tip for anyone still playing – play the arena every chance you get. Even if you’re paired with a level 60 opponent and the monsters are killing you with one hit, don’t revive, just lie there. You don’t have to be alive to earn the 5000 gp.